This invention relates to clean up gloves and clean up bags, and specifically the conversion of an economical plastic glove into a disposal bag.
Many types of disposable clean up bags have been developed. These often take the form of the bag of Rutherford, Great Britain Patent No. 2,100,581A, the bag of Marvin, U.S. Pat. No. 3,813,121, the bag of Dahlke, U.S. Pat. No. 3,837,696, the bag of Naderi, U.S. Pat. No. 4,215,886, the bag of Johnson, U.S. Pat. No. 3,850,467 or the bag of Larsson, U.S. Pat. No. 4,132,442.
These bags have manipulative components which often are troublesome to operate. Often the object being cleaned up cannot be properly cleaned or scraped up without additional manipulation from a free hand or another scraper. Very often the inexperienced clean up operator contaminates his own hands in using these clean up bags. Often the only sure way of protecting the operator from this contamination is for the operator to wear additional protection such as plastic gloves.
This adds to the cost of the clean up materials as the additional plastic gloves must either be cleaned or disposed of.
Further, all of the above collection bags include a metal scraper or other metal or plastic component which adds to the cost of the disposable clean up bag, and renders each unused bag bulky to store before use. This scraper or jaw component is contaminated upon usage and either requires disinfecting or clean up afterwards or is disposed of in the bag. When disposed of with the bag, it adds to the bulk size of the waste and often creates a puncture hazard to the bag.
Inexpensive disposable plastic gloves are often used in clean up operations. These provide distinct advantages over the bags, cited above, in that they are form fitting to the clean up operator's hands, protect the operator from contamination in awkward clean up situations and are usually easy to store before use.
In the past, such gloves were provided by Smith, U.S. Pat. No. 3,596,798, Stager, U.S. Pat. No. 4,186,445 and Smith, U.S. Pat. No. 4,034,853. However, once such gloves were used, an additional disposal bag or disposal carton as shown by Campbell, U.S. Pat. No. 4,186,955 was needed. These additional disposal containers add to the expense and to the storage requirements for clean up materials. The contaminated gloves themselves require disinfection after use, or are required to be disposed of. Even in this latter case, contaminent material clinging to the glove may cause additional unwanted contamination. This is true even if the contaminated glove is turned inside out as particulate matter can fall off and out of the turned glove.
It is the object of this invention to provide a clean up glove which is simple, economical and disposable and which combines the advantages of both plastic gloves and of sealable disposal bags while overcoming the disadvantages of each.